Amit Gaurav

Microsoft Dynamics 365 | Industry Vertical Solutions | ERP | CRM | AI | RPA | Blockchain | Engineering Services | Machine Learning | Mobile Apps

[Amit Gaurav @iamagaurav]

@MrBeast 130000

[Nithin Kamath @Nithin0dha]

We often blame the government or other people for many societal issues, but real change begins with us. People watch, copy, and learn from what they see, whether it's good or bad. Sadly, even the educated and elite rarely set the right examples when it comes to civic sense.

This @Zero1ByZerodha video explores how our lack of civic responsibility affects us all. It's already hit nearly 1 million views in just 8 days. Worth a watch!

[Amit Gaurav @iamagaurav]

@damianbplayer AGENTS

[Amit Gaurav @iamagaurav]

@aaditsh AI

[Amit Gaurav @iamagaurav]

@aadit_palicha Bhai pahle Zepto ke UI/UX pe thoda Paisa kharch kar... Na to color combination badhiya hai or na product and item ka pricing sahi jagah. Neither it looks professional nor kool. The UI should be like people would love to explore and spend time but at Zepto it's juz opposite.

[Amit Gaurav @iamagaurav]

@moronhumor @StarSportsIndia @JioHotstar @BCCI Bhai samay ke saath sab badla.. are u still using radio and ur black & white TV. Sikhna hai to coaching join kar.

[शब्द साहित्य मंच @shabdsahity]

कोशिश 🙏
ये वायरल होना जरूरी है🙏💯

[Arindam Paul @arindam___paul]

Every consumer brand today understands that to grow and scale profitably, they have to be omnichannel. Simply because their consumers are. Whether it is commerce or content consumption, consumers are doing it across channels seamlessly. Research offline, buy online, and vice versa is extremely common

For example- 70% of consumer durables/electronics research begins online, but 70% sales are still offline. The keyword searches for many categories on Amazon/Google is only a small % of actual sales happening online. Same for youtube views on product review videos
And now, with the advent of Quick-com, there are categories like beauty, general merchandise where research/discovery is happening on Nykaa/Amazon/Google/offline and purchase on Q-com

For brands which have both D2C websites and EBOs, the best/highest converting footfall in the EBOs are actually people who have visited and researched the products on the website

But despite understanding all of these, most consumer brands fail miserably when it comes to being truly omni-channel. So, if you are looking to scale across channels successfully, here are some must-dos across 4 heads

a) Organization Structure & KPIs :

Traditional structures simply won’t work if you are trying to build omnichannel. Most often we see different sales heads for different channel. We also see independent teams for e-commerce/modern trade resulting in internal competition for same consumer and often conflicting promotions

And as a result channel conflict emerges from different margins across channels,
Separate targets and KPIs and separate marketing budgets by channel

Even for many new age brands who have a good D2C business and have newly opened EBOs, there are no synergies.

The team that drives D2C has absolutely no incentive to drive relevant consumers to EBOs. In fact I will not be surprised if D2C teams in these companies will hide/remove the store locator to improve site conversions as that is what they are incentivized for

The first way to solve it is to structurally remove silos and align incentives. Incentives drive behaviour. Have common joint goals and KPIs.

At Atomberg, the growth team which drives e-commerce demand is also responsible for generating searches on Google and Youtube as this has highest correlation with offline demand. They are also responsible for generating leads that can be forwarded to the local teams. They are also responsible for driving footfalls to our marquee MBOs using the store locator. And all of these at a city level and a state level. So, in addition to channel wise targets at a national level, there are region wise targets for all channels combined which is of equal importance for the growth team

The second solve is people. If you have a Offline Sales Head with 0 understanding/appreciation of e-commerce, and a e-commerce head with 0 understanding/experience of General Trade, you are simply setting up for failure. For this, you will need cross rotation of roles. People who have done GT roles should be moved to e-com and vice versa. There also has to be significant digital upskilling for most of the org who haven’t been exposed to e-commerce

b) Technology: Without the right tech stack and without an unified view of consumers, you can’t be omnichannel. If you have EBOs, the most important thing for you is to get the right CRM. Once you have the right CRM, you can actually get all demand gen ( leads, website visits, conversions etc) tracked at a pincode level

This also helps you to map the consumers entire history. Someone walking to your store who has already bought your product 3 times will definitely have a higher conversion rate than someone who is walking to your store but never visited your site
If you have the right technology and all of these information, you can set KPIs accordingly. Both for your website as well as stores

Contd in next tweet..

[Arindam Paul @arindam___paul]

We have built our E-com business from first principles and ruthless execution on all aspects

Sales = Page Visits * Conversion Rate * AOV

To increase revenue, you have to increase page visits, conversion rates and AOV

There are very clear levers to improve each

Today, the E-com business is a 300 cr plus biz. We are market leaders by a margin on both Amazon and Flipkart in fans, and amongst the early movers in our category in quick-com. It is also a profitable channel for us as we run a very efficient ops in this channel

And I believe that the India e-com/quick com story is just starting

Our aspiration is to make e-com a 1000 cr business in the next 5 years. And to be a market leader in all the categories we enter. Our mixer grinder is already amongst the top 15 on Amazon. And many new products and categories are lined up for launch in the next 18 months

And for that, we are looking for a leader to lead our e-com business. Strong first principles thinking, ruthless execution, strong account management skills, strong people skills and high problem solving/analytical thinking are pre requisites.

And some sort of proof of work that you have done it in the past. This isn’t a role that we can hire only on potential

Don’t care much about education creds/college etc. Doesn’t matter if you have a MBA/Btech/any other degree. Only thing matters is proof of professional excellence in at scale

If this sounds interesting, drop me a mail with the subject line : Ecommerce at Atomberg

I am at [email protected]

And if you aren’t interested, do RT/share with someone who might be

[Arindam Paul @arindam___paul]

Despite all the buzz around D2C, q-com and e-com, and despite all these channels growing much quicker than the market, any consumer founder you speak to will always want to go and scale offline and become an omnichannel brand

And to build a large (500 cr+) profitable consumer brand, I don’t think not going offline is even an option in 99% of categories

Caveat: Wherever I have mentioned offline, I have primarily considered General Trade, which is 80% of offline in most categories

Why offline?

a) Channel Mix: Most categories still have 80-85% volumes coming from offline channels. And while the online channels are growing, most existing categories will still continue to have a significant offline share. Channel mixes don’t change overnight in any category. Brands that try to have a significantly different channel mix from the category at large usually end up with much higher CAC.

Eg: If 80% of consumers buy shoes offline, it means unless you are present offline, your effective TAM is only 20% of the universe. And while you may argue that you can try and persuade a consumer to buy online through ads/offers, it would mean significantly higher CAC as in addition to convincing about product/brand, you are also persuading someone to change their channel preference

The only exception to this rule is if you are launching a new category itself or the current category where you are launching is small and doesn’t have an established channel yet. Eg: premium protein bars, electric toothbrushes, water flossers etc could be such examples. In these categories, going offline isn’t a no brainer and needs to be evaluated

b) Profitability at Scale : The rule of thumb is that if the more fragmented it is, the greater the margin retention and power for the brand. Conversely, if a channel is more organized, such as e-commerce or q-com or Modern Trade, the margin retention and power shift towards the channel.

When you have 100s of distributors and 1000s of retailers selling your product, you are not dependent on few partners. And thus margin power stays with the brand

When it is few players controlling the entire channel ( eg: Swiggy/Zepto/Blinkit in quick-com), the cost of doing business will always be significantly higher compared to offline

The other reason why profitability improves at scale is that you get the benefits of economies of scale. General Trade is a compounding channel. Yes, to open any city, you need to invest a fixed amount in manpower and trade marketing collaterals in most shops. But once the shops starts selling in greater quantities, your costs more or less stays the same. Thus improving profitability. This is unlike channels like e-com/D2C where the cost of acquiring customers only increases after a certain point

c) Omnichannel Consumer: The consumer is truly omnichannel. They will discover online, buy offline and also discover offline, buy online. This is behaviour displayed by a good chunk of consumers. So if your product is not available at the store, you lose out on this entire cohort of consumers. And having an offline presence helps build more trust with consumers. They can physically examine the product. The ability to “touch and feel” does and will continue to be an important parameter for trust. If you’re visible, you’re credible

When to Go offline?

For digital-first consumer brands thinking to launch offline, it’s critical to get the timing right. The investment is high both in terms of time and money. The risk is even higher because, unlike e-commerce marketplaces, you don’t get second chances easily. On Amazon, if you fail with a launch once, you can re-launch with a different branding and messaging. But in GT, a false start is hard to rectify

So when should you start offline? Ideally, only after you experience product-market-price-fit on D2C or e-commerce channels. You know that your product is accepted and wanted in the market at the price you’ve kept, and offline channels will only accelerate growth

But how do you identify if you have achieved PMF on online channels? There are a few indicators:

a) Your product’s share in e-commerce in your price category should be 10% or more. Eg: If I am selling a 7000 Rs mixer and I do not have a 10% market share in the >6000 segment on Amazon, it is too early to go offline. If I can’t beat large incumbents online, it will be foolish to assume I can do that on their playground, which is the offline market

b) Product Ratings greater than 4.3. This shows that the product delivers what it commits it will deliver

c) Conversion rate higher than the category average at the price point. It shows that Value>Price. This is extremely critical as it is very difficult to tweak/play around with pricing once you launch offline

d) High repeats ( if you are in a repeat category). This is the strongest identifier of a great product and increases your chances of success when you go offline

All the above parameters point to some kind of organic pull from the market. When such a product is taken offline, the probability of success is much higher

But online PPMF alone and some kind of organic pull is not enough

The reason is that driving sellout from offline retail counters is extremely difficult. Yes, you can have the best distributor, best sales processes, be present in the best counters. But if your product does not sell from the counters, you will fail

It is obvious and the same holds true in online channels as well. The only difference is in online channels, you have 100x more control on the execution of the sellout levers. If products aren’t getting clicks on Amazon, you can increase spends on search ads. If conversion is low, you can increase discounts. You get the drift

It is extremely difficult to execute this at scale efficiently in offline channels. And hence if there is no pre-existing demand for your product or a solid demand gen plan, launching offline is bound to fail for new age brand

Retailers have two primary objectives: maximize earnings and sell good products. The earning from sales is their livelihood. And they need to stock good products to retain the trust of their customers and ensure repeat visits.

So basically, they want to stock products that:
· Customers want and love
· Are easy to sell and fast moving
· Have good margins and trade schemes

It’s almost a given that retailers will retain a higher margin from new brands for the risk they’re undertaking. But high margins don’t mean much without good sales. And to drive sales, brands need to do a lot of work on the ground and even away from it.

There are only 4 ways to ensure sellout increase from retail counters

a) Get more people to come and ask for your brand/pick your brand
b) When people are looking for the category and haven’t decided on a brand and is asking the retailer, get the retailers to push your product
c) When people are looking for the category and haven’t decided on a brand and is looking around the store, get your in-shop display to grab attention and bring the product into the consideration set
d) Have promoters in shop to push the brand to people who haven’t decided on the brand

And all of this need significant investment in manpower, on-ground demand gen ( BTL, promoters, extra margins, schemes etc) and overall demand gen ( brand, performance spends) in that geography

And unlike digital channels, since there are so many stakeholders involved, the chances of poor execution is high. And it also takes time to show results

So, the other most important part while going offline, is to account for the investments and time that will be needed to get results. If your financials don’t allow that today, do not expand offline

In a nutshell, go offline once you have clear Product Price Market Fit online, great product reviews, some pre-existing pull, a detailed offline demand generation plan and the ability to absorb all the financial hits for the first 9-12 months

And even then, do not start with more than 1-2 markets. Perfect the process in a couple of markets ( preferably where you already have demand) and then expand into other markets

Winning offline is very difficult. But following this process will significantly increase the odds of success in the most profitable channel in most categories- offline General Trade

[Amit Gaurav @iamagaurav]

@bhash @kunalkamra88 A good customer service brings business and a bad one brings business for competitors.Think not only on what's wrong BUT work on WHY it's happening. Is it a product failure or non technical skills of the service men's? Plan, execute and reply to us with a few good success stories

[Amit Gaurav @iamagaurav]

@Ubermenscchh Pdf

[Amit Gaurav @iamagaurav]

@Theboysthing Gandu nahi Baklund GenNxt hai

[Amit Gaurav @iamagaurav]

@ravishndtv Baba tum nasha washa karna thoda kum karo... wrna aansu bhi bahenge rastey badal badal ke...

[Amit Gaurav @iamagaurav]

@RonakMisra Isko kahte hai Baklund.. isko apne baal na hone ka Ghamand ho rakha hai

[Amit Gaurav @iamagaurav]

@elonmusk a dislike button or emoji will save many people time in going through unnecessary posts of followers. Later the pay checks can reflect these. Sometimes it's so irritating going through threads which are of full waste.

[Vibhor Varshney @nakulvibhor]

I could not control my tears after watching this

Father's day ❤️

[Amit Gaurav @iamagaurav]

@voiceformenind Things will not change, better you get used to the situation and start handling smartly. Avoid discussing and telling stories, the issue is not being possessive for you but it's her nature. The day she gets busy with some work things will change.

[André Arnaud de Calavon @dynamicspedia]

What is the purpose of two new #XDS #security roles in #msdyn365fo?
When will this be useful and what considerations would you need to take before applying such a role to a user in an environment?
https://t.co/yhkYjW6D6k

[Amit Gaurav @iamagaurav]

@GabbbarSingh Disagree!
We usually hire people who are actively looking and the badge "Open to Work" helps us.
Depends upon the mindset.